Chetna Maroo’s Western Lane is a restrained tale of grief, love, and sport

Outside the court, Gopi’s life is uncertain and uneasy. Her sisters, Mona and Khush, are dealing with their loss in different ways, the eldest Mona in trying and discarding various roles (mature caregiver, sullen daughter, mean sister) and the golden child Khush in holding late-night talks perhaps with their dead mother.

Pa is unravelling. He is slipping up at home, slipping up at work. The Gujarati Jain community in London is watching the family, askance. In the not-too-far distance in Edinburgh are Uncle Pavan and Aunt Ranjan, both reassurance and threat.

The sparse, clean prose is evocative. Maroo beautifully brings out the quiet devastation of Gopi’s grief, the giant weight of her mourning balanced on her limited knowledge of things. The sisters tenderly reach out of their own sorrow to look out for each other and provide care and company. The side characters are etched in few but sure strokes, and the book manages to conjure a richly populated world even in its brief length.

In a novel about three girls on the cusp of growing up, there are, of course, relationships. Mona has unquiet yearnings, and there is a solid and silent companionship between Gopi and her squash partner Ged. Ged’s mother and Pa also get close, leading to talks that the girls find uncomfortable.

Pa’s own grief is stark. Dealing with his loss, he does not know what to do with three motherless girls, and is afraid of them finding a way to live without him. He is taciturn and can come across as aloof from his daughters, but Maroo illuminates his actions with gestures of unspoken, unspeakable love.

The dialogues are about the banal and everyday, with the real action revealed in silences. Partially because of this, Gopi’s outburst and Ged’s mother’s reaction come across with much power, like the smash and thwack of a squash ball.

In an interview with the Booker Prize, Maroo says about her writing process, “I usually try to get each sentence and paragraph sounding right before I go on, reading and editing from the beginning of the story… I have to trust that the work will benefit in the end from the rhythm and slow quality of this attention.”

The attention and discipline are apparent in the book — Maroo’s control over the plot is that of a sportsperson on the field, not an inch of flab gets away. But at the end, the reader is left questioning if there’s maybe a little too much restraint in the writing. The book has atmosphere, but too little is said. Some of this is by design. The family has never been very verbal. Ma was more comfortable in Gujarati than in English, which the girls spoke more fluently. Thus, to communicate with her, they “pulled at her, pushed into her, made ourselves physical in her presence”. The withdrawn and harrowed Pa does not encourage the same physicality, and the communication is stilted.

But the three sisters, not far apart in age, don’t speak much either. The silence that feels perfect in Ged and Gopi’s relationship comes away as too vacant in the sisters’. While Mona is given personality and struggles, the lovely Khush seems to exist only as a foil to the other two girls. Gopi’s feelings regarding Uncle Pavan and Aunt Ranjan appear unexplored and unexplained. The end of a captivating book is so abrupt as to feel unresolved.

Maroo is a powerful writer, but her skillful debut makes one wish she had allowed herself a little more flourish and freedom.